Almost Divorce- Part 38 Communication

This story is concluding today.  You can start at the beginning here.  The timeline is  here.

I think some people in my life think Babu and I just jumped back into being together, that I lost Paul, immediately begged Babu to take me back, and that he just stupidly and willingly came.   This used to bother me slightly because I was still carrying around the new shame of the whole ordeal, now it just makes me laugh.    Let me write it out for you another time, it would have been emotionally easier to simply go on and get divorced. That printed out; ready for the notary Divorce Decree was the weapon of choice in those first weeks when we didn’t know what we wanted to do.

It’s time to revisit communication.  First let’s review.  Remember way back in something like Part 2 when I said that I should of run to Babu and poured my heart completely out about what I was going through and the emotionally issues it was  causing?   I’ve mentioned the hours and hours of awful conversation we had as we started down this journey, all that time spent discussing one yucky situation after another.  We collectively smoked through a pack a day because of all the time we spent in the garage having Mommy and Daddy are going to go in the garage and talk time while the children literally ran amok inside the house.

After we spent a weekend together at the Chateau, we came home and went back to our regularly scheduled lives as separate people.   We still switched the kids on Fridays after school; the opposite parent still had dinner with the kids on Tuesday’s.   We did  make an effort to talk more about what was happening to us,  and to spend more time together as a couple and as a family.  What this looked like to the kids was small things like Mommy being invited to dinner at Daddy’s house and vice versa, or the babysitter coming so Mommy and Daddy could go out.   We didn’t talk to the kids about what any of it meant, or act like it was anything special, we just did it.  We also took a lot of time during those visits to engage in many conversations of varying degrees of emotional discomfort and potentially explosive results.

When we were ruining our marriage and getting divorced we went through lots of anger and yelling, had heart baring, gut wrenching talks.  We learned through all of that practice to get better.   We had no choice  if we were going to become any kind of amicable co parents and all of that drama of our journey helped to teach us how.    Now that we were trying to figure out if we wanted to be a couple again we had to sit down and have more of those talks.   Two people who only weeks ago were ready to move on had to sit down and re-hash their separation, what we learned about ourselves, each other, our relationship.   It was like we were attacking it on two fronts.  Offensively with things like both of us writing down what kind of relationship we want (with anyone) and then meeting to discuss and share. Then the defenses of  anger, grief and confusion that arose when things like: I realized I never tried anything new and when I did I was a douche about it, so while we were separated I hung out with this friend girl and did all this amazing shit I’d never do with you; or how many guys did you sleep with were addressed.   This wasn’t 2 high school kids getting back together after a stupid fight about what Betty said in the lunch room, this was a 12 year relationship that was ripped apart in an amicable but deep and ugly fashion, scars were being reopened, new wounds were being drawn, we still had the “Fuck you, I’ll sign those papers right now and meet you at the bank at noon and we will get divorced anyway”.    We both pulled that line MORE than once before we realized if we were going to have any chance, we had to take that card off the table.  I’d end up divorcing him on proving I don’t bluff alone and that would certainly have been obstinate and stupid stubborn.   We didn’t do anything about the filing, but we had to remove it from our conversation.  Removing it from the conversation forced us both back to  communicating emotionally uncomfortable things  in an as safe and open and environment as we could provide for each other.   My opinion is this communication intimacy is the inner glue that keeps any relationship together.  Intimacy deeper  than just I know a lot about the other person and how their mind works,   what is really in their heart, what are their triggers and issues.   True intimacy allows you to communicate the scariest thing you can imagine and trusting that no matter how awful it is, sharing the fearlessly be yourself  BGP truth of it and trusting that the other person is engaged, committed and capable of loving you in spite of whatever it is. You become a team that sharpens each other, trusts each other, knows when to let each other be and holds each other up in times of need.    True intimacy requires the not always pleasant truth.  I have some level of this intimacy with many of my Besties. There is no relationship more important to have this in than with the person you plan on making a life and children with. I have close to 12 years of marriage in and I will tell you that life and children will do everything they can to tear you apart.   They say pick a mate that is easy to be with in the beginning because “they” know it gets a lot harder as time and life changes are added. The stakes are greater and Babu and I both seem to understand that now.

We baby stepped our way through week after week, then month after  month until one week he went for a visit to Florida and when he got home he came to the house and never left.  Eventually he made the decision to let the apartment go and move all of the displaced stuff back home.  I’ve mentioned some of the miss-steps and distractions of our reconciliation path before. The first year was a little bit of a roller coaster, but we got through it, each on our own, as a couple and as a family.   We are not perfect people, we don’t have a perfect marriage, our family has flaws, but we work to be engaged, committed and capable of loving each other to keep that intimacy glue strong in our marriage.  This doesn’t mean we go around having these kinds of talks all the time these days, or that when we do they are as emotionally charged or as yucky as those from our almost divorce.  Lives  always have set backs but are not always in a state of crisis.

I think we have reasonably reached the end of our story Lovies.  Never one to close a door, I may write an epilogue or random AD post from time to time if I  have something I need to say or add.  Thanks for reading it, I hope you laughed, learned, and loved.